Beautiful Rienzi; or, The Secret Vendetta — page 151: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

144 BEAUTIFUL RIENZI. CHAPTER XVIII. SILVERLBA. ‘‘So thick the boughis and the leavis green Beshaded all the alleys that there were. *” * * * * *x Growing so fair with branches here and there, | That as it seemed toa lyf without The boughis spread the arbour all about.” | JAMES IsT, SCOTLAND. Our journey was soon over; my eagerly recurring query— ‘Ts this Ranelagh?’—was at last answered by my father in the affirmative (who must have dislocated his neck to satisfy my curiosity), and the train rushed with a savage whoop into a small covered station; the guard shouted in at the door, ‘‘ Ranelagh!’ and we rose from our seats. In five minutes we were huddled together on a wooden platform, my mother supporting Isolina on her arm; Sophie mounted guard over a muffled cage containing my little hoopoes from the Valley of Arno; a whimpering Neapolitan pup in her arms, of undoubted breed but stupid disposi- tion—also mine; a valise on either side of her, and an um- brella dangling from her little finger; while my father res- cued our baggage from the incredulous vanguards, and I looked about in vain for signs of the village. At last we were ushered out of the station by one of a group of boys, whose straw hat was like the poet’s dream: ‘‘T had a hat, which was not all a hat, Part of the rim was gone;” and after mounting a slight hill, the hotel of Ranelagh was designated to us and I beheld the village. . There was a broad, grass-grown street, fenced off appro- priately by what might pass for ‘‘ broken lines” in geom- etry, but to the general eye looked like zig-zag fencing; infringed on, farther on, by some half a dozen houses on elther side, squatted cozily behind tall poplars or Balm of Gilead trees. _ Qn the horizon a deep, blue belt of ocean wavered with Eomicbooks*:e